Monday, March 30, 2015

The bulk of salamander and Wood Frog egg laying at Blue Jay
Barrens occurred between March 13 and March 17.
In the two weeks since egg laying began, air temperatures have ranged
from a low of 10oF to 75oF. Water temperature has not suffered such wild
fluctuations, due to the constant inflow of relatively warm spring water. Despite these varying conditions, development
of salamander eggs is progressing at a rapid pace.

Several of the Jefferson Salamander egg clusters show eggs
with white colored centers. This usually
indicates the presence of fungus feeding on unfertilized and damaged eggs.

There are still plenty of live embryos in these masses, so
there should be no shortage of larvae hatching into the pond.

Jefferson Salamanders concentrated their egg laying efforts
on sticks floating in the pond. Several
large sticks are completely covered with Jefferson egg masses. Streamside Salamanders made heavy use of the
hard surface structure I placed in the pond for their use.

The structure was composed of a mixture of clay drainage
tiles, bricks, rocks, and boards. My
thought was to see if the salamanders preferred one substrate over another.

Substrate type didn’t seem to matter. There were eggs everywhere.

Once the lower surfaces were covered with eggs, the
salamanders began attaching eggs wherever they could find a hard surface. Next year I will try placing the material so
there are more spaces between the various components.

Wood Frog egg masses are beginning to lose their
cohesiveness and spread across the water surface.

Frog tadpoles are becoming free swimming and detaching from the egg masses.

Development of the eggs on the outside of this mass seems to
be several days behind those eggs in the center.

Eggs in the top of the mass are most susceptible to damage
from weather conditions. Ice formed over
the top of these eggs several times during the past two weeks. Several embryos seem to have been killed from
freeze damage. Larvae hatching from that
top layer of eggs also seem to have a tough time working their way out to open
water. Even so, plenty of live tadpoles
will result from this hatching.

Attracted by the movement of hatching tadpoles, one of the
breeding pond’s super predators moves in to investigate this newly available
food source. Red-spotted Newts will take
their toll on the young salamander and frog larvae. They can’t eat them all, even though they
will try. Plenty of young salamanders
and frogs will live to add their efforts to future annual breeding activities.

Monday, March 23, 2015

Early last November, the Carolina Wolf Spider residing at
the edge of one of my vegetable garden beds, sealed off the entrance to her burrow in preparation for surviving the cold winter season. The earthen seal remained undisturbed through
the winter. On March 16 of this year,
the seal was removed and the burrow reopened.

Heavy snow flattened Butterflyweed stalks and effectively
erased signs of the burrow entrance. Had
I not placed a white marker stone a few inches from the burrow, I would have
had a hard time deciding just where I should be watching for the reappearance
of the burrow.

On March 21 I caught my first glimpse of the spider. I was happy to see that she had survived the
winter with no noticeable negative effects.
With no nearby standing cover, it’s hard to get close to the burrow
without scaring the spider back inside. The
spider is just about dead center in this shot.

Fortunately, the spider was quick to reemerge from its
burrow, so I had plenty of photo opportunities.

This spider is a female who would have been hatched in the
summer of 2013. She attained her adult
size last summer and should have mated sometime in the fall. That means she should be producing eggs this
spring that will hatch in early summer.
I’ll be keeping a close eye on her in hopes of witnessing some of the
young leaving the burrow later on.

Friday, March 20, 2015

The tall grass in the Prairie Garden looks a bit battered
from the heavy snows it endured this winter.
The combination of strong west winds, heavy snow, and no support outside
the garden boundary, caused much of the grass to be laid on its side. Even though there are acres of similar
habitat very close by, birds and other animals spend a lot of time foraging and
hiding in this small plot. This is one
of the reasons I leave the garden untouched through the winter.

The new portion of the Prairie Garden has little prairie
grass, so the dead stalks of various wild flowers are easy to see. Birds have pretty much picked the area clean
of seeds.

In the spring, I remove the dead top growth. The process begins by cutting with the brush
mower and raking the cut material from the garden.

The clearing away of dead material is done primarily to give
me an unobstructed view of the developing plant life. I intentionally crowded a large number of
species into this small space. They all
grow naturally at Blue Jay Barrens, but it takes a bit of a walk to visit all
of the areas where the different species occur.
The Prairie Garden specimens make it possible to easily visit the plants
every day and follow the various stages of their development. The recent heavy snow cover has slowed the
emergence of many of the common plants.
Some species, such as this Orange Coneflower, Rudbeckia fulgida, were
already green and growing prior to the onset of snow.

Monarda has produced this growth in just the week or so
since the snow melted.

The invasive Oxeye Daisy, Chrysanthemum leucanthemum,
legally designated as a noxious weed in Ohio, maintains a cluster of green
basal leaves through the winter. This is
the only specimen found in the garden this spring.

I’ve been pulling Oxeye Daisy from the Prairie Garden to
evaluate the effectiveness of this method in controlling the weed. I’ve found that the pulled plant can be killed
if all segments of the spreading rhizome are removed from the ground. Fibrous roots don’t seem capable of regrowing
the plant, but any small segment of rhizome will quickly reestablish the
infestation. Pulling isn’t a practical
method of dealing with fields already filled with Oxeye Daisy, but it can be
effective in dealing with new incursions into previously uninfested areas.

After raking, I go over the garden with a push mower
equipped with a grass catching bag. It’s
at this stage in my management efforts that some people get the impression that
I’m finally getting rid of the weed patch in my yard in favor of a cleanly
mowed look.

It is now easy to see anything growing in the garden area.

The material removed from the Prairie Garden is hauled back
to the vegetable garden and used as mulch between the raised growing beds. By next fall, the material will be well
composted and will be incorporated on top of the beds.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Salamanders have once again been stimulated into a flurry of
egg laying activity at Blue Jay Barrens.
This has been an odd weather year that presented the salamanders with
limited opportunities to safely travel overland to their breeding pools. A light rain on January 3 brought in the
first of the Jefferson Salamanders, but no egglaying activity was noticed. A storm on February 1 gave us a third of an
inch of rain and Streamside Salamanders joined Jeffersons in the pond. Water level was still very low and only a few
egg clusters were produced. The pond
quickly iced over. Snow then covered the
ice and the pond remained hidden from view for nearly a month.

Finally, over two inches of rain fell during a 24 hour event
beginning March 3 and ending March 4. The pond filled and salamander breeding
resumed.

Following the rain, fresh Jefferson Salamander eggs appeared
on twigs throughout the pond.

The rain fell on soil that was already saturated by snow
meltwater, so nearly the entire two inches moved overland to the creeks. This carried numerous sticks and other debris
that entered the pond and was used by the salamanders as an anchor for their
egg masses. Now these loose batches of
eggs are being driven by the wind and are in danger of being left high on the
shore as the pond water level slowly drops.
I make periodic circuits of the pond to relocate eggs in danger.

I found a couple of Jefferson Salamanders out of the water
and heading away from the pond. Some of
these guys have been in the pond for over ten weeks, so I guess it’s about time
for them to be getting back to their underground burrows.

The Streamside Salamanders also got busy laying their eggs. Streamsides attach their eggs on the
underside of submerged objects such as rocks and boards.

Instead of being contained as a group within a mass of
jelly, Streamside Salamander eggs are individually attached.

Wood Frogs also emerged with the warm rain. They have spent the past several days
producing large egg masses.

A few frogs and salamanders took advantage of the branches hanging
below my floating jug and attached their eggs to this safe location. Weather conditions made it impossible for me
to float the branches prior to the arrival of the breeding amphibians, so my
success in keeping the eggs safe from fluctuating water level was not nearly as
successful as last year.

Many of the eggs were laid near the shoreline where a falling
water level could leave them hanging in the air. If our spring rainfall is less than normal, I’ll
just have to relocate all of these egg clusters to deeper water.

Friday, March 13, 2015

This aerial map shows the roughly three acre field in which
I am currently completing cedar maintenance.
Red outlines indicate the areas of the field that have so far been
completed. A small area to the right is
yet to be done. The portions labeled B-2
and C were completed back in early February.
Work was then halted when a series of storms buried the field in
snow. Snow exited the field a couple of
days ago, but it wasn’t until yesterday that the soil dried out enough for me
to resume work. Section D was completed
yesterday afternoon and E is what I could get done this morning before heavy
rain moved in. I would not normally be
doing this type of work in March, but I just couldn’t leave the field partially
completed. If the rain ends tomorrow as
predicted, it will probably be the middle of next week before the soil will be
dry enough for me to finish the last bit of this field.

The aerial view makes it appear that this field is heavily
occupied by large Eastern Red Cedars.
The view from ground level shows that the cedars are spaced widely
enough apart to allow plenty of sunlight to reach the ground. Where soil conditions allow, a thick grass
cover is present.

The slope steepens rapidly at the south end of the
field. The last 15 feet are an almost
vertical plunge into the creek. The last
of the snow is still holding on along the top of the creek bank.

Field blends with woods at the steep north end of the field. One October, about 20 years ago, I mowed a
path through the tall grass. The deer,
which always seem to take the easiest option while walking, immediately began
following the mowed path. They still
follow the same path and are responsible for it becoming a muddy trail. As deer numbers increased through the years,
they developed paths in other directions through the field and now this is just
one in an expanding network of deer highways.

This is considered to be a south facing field. Unlike the previous field I discussed, this
one is dissected by a network of surface depressions that drain water in many
different directions. While the field is
still generally south facing, there is a wide variation in slope steepness and
direction. This gives the field an interesting
collection of microclimates within its boundary.

Saturated soil is still releasing water into the center of
the drains. The presence of water on the
surface is short lived, but a gradual movement of subsurface water along this
same route may persist for a couple more months.

Small cedars thrive in these areas of increased water
availability. This eroded area was
practically bare when I bought this property.
Prairie grasses are slowly stabilizing the soil.

Between each drain is a ridge. There is a drastic difference in the amount
of water available to plants on the ridges as opposed to the drains.

This section of the field suffered soil slips that resulted
in a stair step arrangement of bare patches on the slope. The slipping stopped long ago, but the poor
quality of soil exposed in each step is making it difficult for vegetation to
become established.

Lichens are the pioneer species in these bare areas. In time, grasses take root in the soil
stabilized by the lichens.

Lichens become established on any stable surface. Here they have encrusted an old cedar stump
left from my initial clearing of the field.

The deep snow mashed down the fine grasses, making it more
difficult to find the small cedars. Even
in the best of conditions I miss a few, but there were probably many more like
this that escaped my search this time.

I found several patches of the uncommon Purple Triple-awned
Grass, Aristida purpurascens, scattered about the field. This grass was represented by only a few
small clumps at the time this field was originally cleared.

The grass gets its name from the three long filaments, known
as awns, projecting from the end of the seed.

I found collections of Blue Jay feathers beneath three
different cedars, evidently the work of a Blue Jay predator. I couldn’t tell if the feather piles
represented three different birds, of if the predator moved the bird a couple
of times while dining. This batch
included a section of leg bone. I’m
guessing this was the work of a Cooper’s Hawk.
The Cooper’s Hawks around here seem partial to Blue Jays and Mourning
Doves. It’s not unusual to find piles of
feathers from these two species. Even
with the hawk whittling down their numbers, the Blue Jays seem just as abundant
as ever.

ABOUT BLUE JAY BARRENS

Located in the Bluegrass region of Southern Ohio, Blue Jay Barrens contains excellent xeric habitat inhabited by a wide variety of rare native plant and animal species. Since 1985, this private property has been managed to improve the integrity of the special ecosystems found here. This blog provides information on the current activities at Blue Jay Barrens.

RESPONSE TO COMMON QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS BLOG

It’s my intent to share information on current events at Blue Jay Barrens. Unless otherwise noted in the text, all photos were taken by me at Blue Jay Barrens.

Plant scientific names are from Gleason and Cronquist 1991. I realize that some changes in preferred nomenclature have occurred, but this is the principle reference I have been using for flora identification. Knowing this, I believe most people can figure out just what plant I’m talking about.

My discussions of flora and fauna are not intended to be a complete life history. There are plenty of good references for this type of information. I am discussing my personal experiences with plants and animals on this specific property. Any other information I may provide is intended to help you understand the significance of my observations.

MY 3 FAVORITE NATURE BOOKS:

1- Of Mosquitoes, Moths and Mice, by C Brooke Worth.2- Mosquito Safari: A Naturalist in Southern Africa, by C Brooke Worth.3- A Naturalist in Trinidad, by C Brooke Worth.

MY 3 FAVORITE FICTION BOOKS:

1- The Witches of Karres by James H Schmitz2- The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham3- The Windhover Tapes (1st 3 volumes) by Warren Norwood

MY 3 FAVORITE MOVIES:

1- Vanishing Point 1971 with Barry Newman2- Flim Flam Man 1967 with George C Scott - also like the book by Guy Owens3- The Lathe Of Heaven 1979 with Bruce Davison - also like the book by Ursula K LeGuin

MY 3 FAVORITE TV SHOWS:

1- The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan2- Fawlty Towers with John Cleese3- Kolchak: The Night Stalker with Darren McGavin